Recently, Vitalikhas frequently talked about Ethereum andAIsecurity. These views of his are still worthy of our attention and consideration.

Concerning the security of Ethereum, Vitalik talked about such an extreme case in an interview.

Binance is recognized as the largest in the industryCEX. Therefore, everyone assumes that the amount of Ethereum held by Binance is also one of the best in the industry. Holding such a large amount of Ethereum, people will naturally think of a "centralization" risk: If Binance uses the Ethereum it holds and operates the corresponding nodes to launch an attack on the entire network, can the Ethereum network still work normally?

To this, Vitalik's answer is no.

Why?

BecauseIf you want to attack Ethereum, the cost Binance needs is 480USD.

Obviously, his conclusion is considered from the perspective of economic benefits. When the benefits are not obvious and the costs are so high, what motivation is there to launch such an attack?

Starting from Bitcoin, the entire operating mechanism of the encryption ecosystem is based on economic incentives/Penalty mechanism. It tacitly assumes that the attacker will not do something unrewarded without any reason, regardless of benefit, or regardless of cost.

Soin terms of mechanism design, as long as the attack cost is far greater than the possible rewards, it is generally assumed that the possibility of an attack is unlikely and security can be guaranteed.

Further, how was this480calculated?

According to current network data, there are approximately320010,000 piecesETH. To launch a 51%attack, one must at least control more than 50%ETH, that is, 1,600Ten thousand piecesETH.

According toVitalikAt the time of the interviewETHPrice (3000USD), this160010,000ETHThe total market value is 480billion US dollars.

But if we really want to plan such an attack, I think the actual cost will be much greater than 480USD.

Because the attacker needs to continue to buy Ethereum in the market. Once such actions continue to occur, it will inevitably lead to an unusual and sustained rise in the price of Ethereum, and a large number of speculators will flock to follow suit and push up the price of Ethereum exponentially. This will further increase the price at which the attacker buys Ethereum.

Flower480What is the concept of attacking Ethereum for 480?

I checked the globalGDPThe military expenditures of the top five countries in the recent year. The results are as follows:

• United States,9160USD

• China, there is no accurate figure, it is estimated to be the second in the world

• Germany,1070USD

• Japan, 600 - 700USD

• France,700USD

According to this data, attacking Ethereum would cost half or more of the annual military expenditures of Germany, Japan and France, and 5%.

So at this level, the most powerful countries in the world to attack Ethereum alone are the United States and China, while other countries will have to pay huge costs to attack Ethereum.

We further guess that if the price of Ethereum reaches 10,000 US dollars, then the cost of attacking Ethereum will reach 1600Billion US dollars.

At this level, the only countries in the world that can attack Ethereum alone are probably the United States and China, and even if these two countries want to attack Ethereum, the cost will be huge.

SoAccording to the data of 480billion dollar attack cost,Vitalikbelieves that Ethereum’s security is now redundant. He believes that if the economic threshold is moderately relaxed, the P2P network layer and consensus layer will be strengthened. leaf="">Robustness, Ethereum as a whole will be more secure.

In my impression, this seems to be the first time that Vitalik has used intuitive and quantitative data to measure the security of Ethereum in public interviews.

This idea and logic are of great help in understanding the security of Ethereum, so it is worth sharing with readers.